The hundred-rupee note felt like a lead weight in Harsh's pocket. It was his entire capital. The last of the money he'd painstakingly earned. One wrong move, one unlucky break, and he'd be back to zero, with nothing to show for his efforts but his father's silent, crushing disappointment.
Today's hunt required a different terrain. He navigated the tighter, more chaotic lanes of Chor Bazaar, where the air smelled of aged wood, rust, and the faint, sweet scent of stolen perfume. Here, everything had a history, and nothing had a warranty. His eyes, now trained to see value in ruin, scanned the stalls piled high with the skeletal remains of electronics.
He found his target: a stall run by a man with a shrewd gaze and fingers stained yellow from decades of tobacco. His wares were a graveyard of personal entertainment—Walkmans with cracked casings, cassette players with their tape doors yawning open, their innards exposed.
"How much?" Harsh asked, his voice cutting through the man's haggling with another customer.
The dealer, Salim Bhai, turned, his eyes appraising Harsh in a single glance. "For what? For you? Everything is expensive."
"For that," Harsh said, pointing to a specific unit. Not the most broken, but the one with the cleanest internal mechanism. A Sony. The crown jewel of personal audio, even in this state.
Salim Bhai picked it up, turning it over with practiced theatrics. "Ah, this is a classic. A little love, it will sing like Lata Mangeshkar. For you… sixty rupees."
It was a ridiculous opening gambit. Harsh didn't flinch. "It's missing the battery cover. The headphone jack is bent. It's a paperweight. Twenty."
They volleyed back and forth, a ritual dance as old as the market itself. Harsh held his ground, his calm demeanor a stark contrast to Salim Bhai's performative outrage. Finally, they settled on thirty-five rupees for the Sony and a utterly shattered National Panasonic player thrown in "for parts." The negotiation cost him another twenty minutes, but it saved ten precious rupees.
His remaining sixty-five rupees bought him a handful of specific components from a different stall—a new drive belt, a fresh set of buttons, a spool of fine-gauge wire. Every purchase was precise, strategic. He wasn't just buying junk; he was sourcing specific solutions.
---
He didn't go to the banyan tree. It was too exposed. Instead, he found a secluded alcove behind a fabric dyer's shop, where the vats of vibrant color steamed in the heat. The acrid smell of dye was overpowering, but it offered privacy.
The repair was a delicate surgery. He laid out his tools—a borrowed screwdriver, his makeshift soldering iron, the new parts. He cleaned the grime of years from the Sony's gears with a rag dampened with stolen water. He carefully straightened the headphone jack with a pair of pliers, his hands steady despite the adrenaline. The new drive belt, a tiny loop of black rubber, was the final piece. He slipped it on with the focus of a bomb disposal expert.
He held his breath and inserted a battered cassette of Mr. India. He pressed play.
For a heart-stopping second, nothing. Then, a faint whir. The gears engaged. Through the single working earpiece of his scavenged headphones, Annette Pinto's orchestra began to play, tinny but perfect.
A surge of pure, undiluted triumph shot through him. He'd done it. He had taken two piles of scrap and willed one back to life.
The National Panasonic was beyond saving, but it yielded a pristine speaker and a set of volume knobs—inventory for the next operation.
---
Selling it was the next test. He couldn't just hawk it on the street; he needed the right buyer. He found him outside a college, a boy with carefully styled hair and a shirt that was too tight, trying to impress a girl.
Harsh didn't give a sales pitch. He simply walked past, the music from the headphones trailing faintly behind him.
"Hey," the boy called out. "Is that a Sony?"
Harsh stopped. "Yeah. Old model."
"It works? How much?"
Harsh looked at the boy, then at the girl. He saw the desire to look sophisticated, to own a piece of brand-name cool. This wasn't about music; it was about status.
"It works perfectly. Hard to find these now. Seventy rupees."
The boy's eyes widened. "Seventy? That's too much!"
Harsh shrugged and made to walk away. "Okay. No problem." The oldest trick in the book.
"Wait, wait," the boy said, flushing slightly in front of the girl. He fumbled in his pockets. "Fifty?"
"Sixty-five. Final price. With the tape."
The transaction was swift. The boy handed over the money, trying to look nonchalant. Harsh pocketed the sixty-five rupees, his blood singing. From thirty-five to sixty-five. A thirty-rupee profit on one device.
He spent the rest of the afternoon selling the salvaged parts individually to other repairmen—the speaker for five rupees, the knobs for three. He ended the day with a total of seventy-three rupees in his pocket from an initial investment of thirty-five.
It wasn't the 100% return of his first days. It was better. It was smarter. It was sustainable. He had proven he could diagnose, repair, and sell a high-value item. He had turned his last hundred rupees into a future.
As he walked home, the evening lights of Bhuleshwar flickering to life, he passed Ramesh-ji's stall. The old man was packing up. He saw Harsh and gave a slow, almost imperceptible nod. It wasn't praise. It was acknowledgment.
Harsh nodded back. The message was clear. He was no longer just a boy playing with scraps. He was in the game.
And the game was about to get much bigger.